She Was
by flairina
Summary: Name: Lorna. Meanings: Alone. Solitary... Lost. It isn't as if Wirt and Greg were the only children to ever find themselves adrift in The Unknown...
1. The Vanishing

_Stray you not in to The Wood_

 _The trees breed death; consume all good_

 _The ground steals names, the wind thieves souls_

 _All that enter,_ _It_ _controls_

 _Do not wander, do not roam_

 _Lest you lose your hearth and home_

 _So stay away, be tempted not_

 _Or from this world you'll be forgot_

* * *

She did not know just how she knew where she was.

But she did.

 _No_...

She could not be here. It was all but impossible. _How_ had she even ended up here?!

Her memory spurned her, turned to liquid in her mental grasp. Try as she might, she could not remember.

But the warnings... those she could recall, for how could she not? Her mother's countless cautions, whispered at the door, as solemn and true as the worry in her eyes. An empty house, its former owner known by none, a sheer impossibility in a town as small as hers. A darkly evocative, but harmless little rhyme, so common and widespread every schoolchild knew it.

If but a single one spoke true, her very existence now hung from a spider's thread. She had to escape, had to find a way _out_ , before-!

But no- she did not even know how it was she had arrived here. How could she know how to leave? All around her, naught but trees, which way was home...?

...could... could she still truly call it _home_? Or had she perhaps, already...?

Somewhere, the girl named Lorna fell to her knees and sobbed.

She was lost.

* * *

All was quiet and still, but for a single, despondent looking girl, trudging downheartedly through the fallen leaves. The trees remained motionless, the wind nonexistent. Footfalls fell hard on the blanket of autumn, far louder than she'd ever thought possible. Each step carried with it the swing of a pendulum, a constant reminder that for every moment she remained _here_ , a little more of her was lost from _there_.

She did not run. Running had only caused her to fall and scrape herself, to stain her skin red with the scores of jagged branch and stone. And so she simply walked, unceasingly forward, her spirit slowly dying.

A tall, shadowed form stared from afar at the newest soul to enter its domain, and hummed merrily to itself.

How nice it was, when it needed expend no effort, and they broke all on their own.


	2. The Lie

A village, small, but there.

At first she had thought it a mirage. A cruel, vicious trick, perhaps even fashioned by the wood itself. But as her steps carried her further down the suddenly existent road, the unmistakable buzz of _people_ reached her ears- speaking, bartering, the sound of wooden wheels as they trundled over dirt, noisily complaining from beneath their heavy loads of goods.

A tiny spark alighted in her chest. Her soul flickered and buzzed.

Could it be...?

And then she did run. For the day had not yet passed entirely, if she had managed to escape The Woods before the sun had set, then perhaps-!

Her feet flew past the entrance of the village, body singing with exhilaration-

"Oof!"

She crashed directly in to something hard and person shaped as they stepped off a side street, her forward momentum brought to an abrupt halt as she sprawled to the ground in an undignified heap. She lay there for a moment, staring upwards, dazedly, unseeingly.

"Ah, my apologies! Here, let me help you up." the woman she'd surely just collided with spoke, an arm reaching down in to her field of vision.

Appreciatively, she reached for the outstretched limb, her head rising slightly off the ground to see-

A hand of rough, unsanded oak. A body, rectangular, unnaturally angled. A face made of paint, stretched like skin across wood.

"Is something wrong?" it asked, upturned line of a mouth never moving.

She shrieked; scrambled backwards; her head whipped violently around as she finally took in the village proper.

Dolls, large as humans, pervaded every corner of her vision. They walked and they laughed, inanimate yet ambulant. Their movements were natural, far _too_ natural, fluid beyond their rightful bodily limits. It almost seemed less like they'd come alive, and more that they'd simply gotten bored of _not_ moving, and at some point decided to _stop_.

An upwards gaze showed her the truth of the matter- an enormous web of tiny, near see-through strings cascaded across the sky, each one connecting to a doll down below. Never did one become crossed or entangled with another, yet each was in constant motion, not stopping for even a moment. It was a pattern of utterly impossible intricacy.

She would have called it beautiful, were its meaning not so devastating.

These were not people.

She hadn't escaped.

"Young miss? Are you alright?" the doll asked, its worried tone at odds with its unmoving features.

She shakily stood and nodded, even as embers, ever so recently lit, crinkled and fell away as ash. Her mind slipped and fell from the edge before the canyon; drowned beneath a ceiling of unbreaking ice.

"Are you sure? I can get you first aid if you need it..."

Liquid soaked through fabric as she dried her eyes on the collar of her dirt-stained dress.

"I- I'm fine..."

She turned, faced the edge of town, and walked on.


	3. The Possession

Darkness had fallen long ago. Stars peeked out from gaps in the dying canopy above.

And still, she did not rest.

Her feet carried her onward, numbed by cold and the feeling of futility. She marched not out of hope, but a sense of obligation, that she _must_ at least try. Even when she had already confirmed so much of what she had been told of this place to be true, and already she likely had nothing to go back too, she _must_. Her family deserved nothing less.

From betwixt two brittle, frozen trunks, the figure with eyes of light all their own peeked out at the distant girl and bristled. It had expected her to stop by now, to fall in exhaustion and be consumed by the Edelwood. But for some reason she had persisted, and if she continued on her current path...

No, this would not do. It would have to divert her, drive her away, before she ended up... _unsuitable_ as sustenance.

* * *

A voice, deep and hollow, yet biting as the chill of the evening air, rang out in operatic song from some distance behind her. In the silence of the night, it struck her ears like a thunderclap.

Her pace did not slow, her course did not change. It was just a trick. There were no humans in The Woods of the Forgotten. She had already seen as much.

It would be pointless to think otherwise more than once.

The song drew closer, its purpose inscrutable. To beckon? To taunt? To cheer? To scare?

In the end, she supposed, it did not truly matter. In fact, if the noise should attract some manner of animal to finish her off, so much the better. To be ended swiftly and immediately would still be preferable to this fate of endless, aimless wandering, an isolation she could bear no more than she could bear the idea, the _fact_ , that even if she ever made it back, her family would _no longer know_ who... who...

A glimpse of soft, bluish light abruptly caught the corner of her eye, bright as the daybreak in the near-utter blackness.

The voice grew in intensity again, now audibly coming from somewhere off to her right.

Almost unconsciously, she stepped off the path and towards the strange illumination. Muted teal rays pulsed and danced across the ground at her feet as she walked forward.

The song picked up, strangely frantic in pace now. The melody had changed, become tense and frenetic, not fitting the singer's voice or tone in the slightest. Yet she could not truly pay attention, despite the incongruity, for the light was almost transfixing in nature. She simply could not tear her attention away, though the path she'd come from was already out of sight...

An abrupt, angry new burst in volume from the singer, wailing from _right_ nearby, but she was so close now, just a little further, the light was just up ahead-

She brushed away the final few branches obscuring her view, and gasped.

At the center of a barren clearing lay a spiraling monolith of glowing, ethereal faces. They spun and they gyred, cackling one and all to some devilish private joke as they ascended, limitless, in to the sky. Each face bore a twisted, monstrous visage, only just humanoid enough for one to see the quite deliberate mockery.

The song was directly behind her, deafening even over the suddenly howling wind.

Several of the faces turned laughing sneers towards her, grinning even wider as they saw exactly what had wandered in to their domain. Before she could think to so much as turn away, a face broke off from the twisting, swirling horde and streaked towards her like a comet, giving her but a moment to close her eyes and pray, for despite how things were now she _did not want to die_ , before it slammed in to her like the fist of God-

-and as if the singer's throat was cut, the night fell silent once more.

* * *

The Beast flew through the forest in the direction it had just come from, seething at its impotence, erupting with soundless rage. The restrictions that confined its actions had allowed prospective fuel to spoil- she was tainted, befouled, _inedible_ now. Had the girl no ears?! Why had she not panicked and fled from the obvious approaching threat he had presented?! Had she sped her pace in the _slightest_ she would surely have missed The Tower; its light could not so much as be _seen_ from any other angle! Her despairing soul would have made for whole _weeks_ worth of nourishment!

Snarling, The Beast vanished back in to the darkness. One had to know when to cut their losses, and this was a loss, without question.


End file.
